I did have a real-life example of the below, but it involved banjos, a discarded wine glass and broken eggs leading to a tent… and I really don’t want to scare you guys off, so: AWKWARD SELF-PROMOTION EXAMPLE MINUS THE BANJOS, WINE and BROKEN EGGS You’re at a networking event or a business gathering and […]

This online business malarkey, it’s all about building relationships, getting influential people to respect and refer you, getting your twitter count up, and building a following who adore you and want to buy your products, right? Wrong. It’s all about you. There is excellent (and free) advice on the Internet about how to get started […]

This bonus article is inspired by a good friend of mine who popped round for a cup of tea the other day before returning to Texas after a visit to Brighton to graduate from her degree course. We were talking about the (not so) New Year, our plans for 2010, and we got onto the […]

Article Series: Goals… (Goals)! Always Believe In Your Soul… It wouldn’t be January without a furore of goal setting. The blogosphere is alight with how to set and achieve your goals in 2010. We’re feeling enthused, excited and ready to take on the world. However, there are still plenty of obstacles out there to try […]

Turning customers away in a recession – insane no? Well, yes and no. Take two fictitious characters, Focused Fred and Pleasing Polly. They’ve both decided to start up their own businesses making tailored clothes. (I have no experience tailoring clothes so I may be rusty with some of the terminology – but should still work) […]

I’ve just returned from having lunch with a friend who is training to be a life coach. We’ve known each other over 10 years and we always laugh whether we’re lunching, coffee-ing or out drinking. I love our chats of late which are usually about self improvement and making fools of ourselves. Interestingly we were […]

If we had to take a trip to New York, we could probably do it. Money aside, the physical action of getting ourselves from one place to another is relatively straight forward to most people. We would need to get ourselves to the airport, get on a flight to New York and there we would […]

I was lucky enough to hear the entrepreneur Julie Meyer speak this week at the Women Unlimited Create your Future Conference and as I scribbled notes (definitely a Dictaphone job next time) something she said made me stop and think. Julie explained how she had never liked the term “breaking through the glass ceiling” as […]

I once knew someone whose motto was to never put himself forward for anything. He would half complete courses but never take the exam, his belief being that if they never took a test he could never “fail” at anything. He admitted his motto was “Don’t Try, Can’t Fail.” It’s an interesting philosophy and whilst […]

At school, work and even when self-employed, you may be familiar with the “People Pleasing Paralysis”. What has been ingrained in you since you were young, could well be stunting the growth of your personality – and your success. We were taught to make the teacher happy, make your boss happy – even if it […]